Horace Jeffery Hodges (email: jefferyhodges@yahoo.com)
holds a doctorate from UC Berkeley (1995), has pursued scholarly research on topics in literature, history,
and religious studies in universities throughout the world (e.g., Tübingen’s Eberhard Karls University and
Jerusalem’s Hebrew University), and currently teaches at Ewha Womans University, in Seoul, South Korea.

In
1759, Adam Smith wrote in Part 3 of his Theory
of Moral Sentiments
that “Love does not judge of resentment, nor resentment of
love. Those two passions may be opposite to one another, but
cannot, with any propriety, be said to approve or disapprove of one
another” (192). Kenneth Moler has argued that Smith’s
work on the sentiments exerted an influence on Jane Austen’s
Pride
and Prejudice,
written some forty years later (567-69). Similarly, Peter
Knox-Shaw examines Elizabeth Bennet’s query, “‘Is
not general incivility [toward others than the beloved] the very
essence of love?’” (160) and finds in it an echo of
Smith’s observation in Moral
Sentiments
(Pt. 1) that “though a lover may be good company to his
mistress, he is so to nobody else” (87-88, n. 44)—although
the similarity seems rather faint to be heard as an echo. On
the “incivility” of lovers, anyway, Smith and Austen
would generally seem to agree, but possible influence by one writer
on another can be found as readily in disagreement as agreement.
Despite her apparent convergence with Smith on some points, would
Austen have accepted Smith’s views on love and resentment,
namely, that neither can judge the other?

An extreme case

Conceivably, Austen set out in Pride and Prejudice
to test this sort of hypothesis concerning love and resentment by
taking the extreme case of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, as he has the
proper temperament for us to focus upon in examining Smith’s
claim. In an early discussion of his faults, Darcy himself
acknowledges his central character flaw to Elizabeth Bennet:

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My
temper I dare not vouch for.—It is I believe too little
yielding—certainly too little for the convenience of the
world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon
as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are
not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper
would perhaps be called resentful.—My good opinion once lost is
lost for ever.” (63)

This
admission is an honest self-evaluation—and perhaps an even more
serious self-critique—yet Darcy also seems rather proud about
his resentful character, for he remarks of his temper that it is “too
little yielding . . . for the convenience of the world”
and of his feelings that they “are not puffed about with every
attempt to move them.” Samuel Johnson, however, defines
“resentful” in an entirely negative sense, as
“[m]alignant; easily provoked to anger, and long retaining it”
(Johnson), an understanding of the term that Austen, and therefore
Elizabeth, would likely also share.

Elizabeth,
in fact, who had been wittily waiting for some trait in Darcy to
lightly poke fun at, retreats into a half-serious observation:
“‘That
is a failing indeed! . . . Implacable resentment is
a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well.—I
really cannot laugh
at it. you are safe from me’” (63). Her point is
well-taken. If Darcy’s fault is a tendency to a
resentfulness that cannot be placated, then to laugh at him for this
failing would run the risk of drawing upon oneself that very
resentment. Darcy does not protest that he has no genuinely
implacable resentment. Instead, he suggests his powerlessness
to correct his fault: “‘There is, I believe, in
every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural
defect, which not even the best education can overcome’”
(63). Through these words, Darcy appeals to a basic Christian
assumption fundamentally at odds with the ongoing Enlightenment
project, for he questions the power of education to overcome evil
natural to humankind. The particular evil may differ from
person to person, but each has an intrinsic defect that education
cannot rectify. Darcy implicitly acknowledges that his
resentment is implacable, and Elizabeth later vividly recollects
“‘his boasting . . . of the implacability of
his resentments’” (90) and that he “‘hardly
ever forgave,’” for his “‘resentment once
created was unappeasable’” (105). Darcy is aware of
Elizabeth’s impression, and neither explicitly nor implicitly
denies its accuracy. As the romantic hero of Austen’s
story, therefore, he is perfectly suited for testing Adam Smith’s
view that neither love nor resentment can judge one another.

Implacable resentment

Austen is not the first writer to thematize “resentment”—nor
even “implacable resentment.” In the hundred or so
years prior to Austen, as Neil Hargraves notes, such Scottish
Enlightenment writers as Lord Kames, Adam Smith, David Hume, and
William Robertson investigated “resentment” both with an
eye toward understanding Scotland’s violent and factional past
and as a means toward overcoming that past (1-21). This
investigation was obviously in line with the Enlightenment project of
moral improvement via education, the assumption being that through
understanding resentment, one could tame it. Yet, Hargraves
repeatedly (at least eight times) notes that these eighteenth-century
intellectuals write of implacable
resentment, which would surely be untameable
and thus ought to call into doubt the entire project. Indeed,
he notes that often, “the mere recital of Scottish history
fostered factional resentment” (1). In fact, “the
writing of history could . . . easily [be] accused of
perpetuating resentment” (4), and Austen herself parodies this
danger in her satirical History of England,
writing of Henry the Sixth:

I cannot say much for this Monarch’s sense—Nor would I if I
could, for he was a Lancastrian. I suppose you know all about
the Wars between him and the Duke of York who was of the right side;
if you do not, you had better read some other History, for I shall
not be very diffuse in this, meaning by it only to vent my Spleen
against,
and shew my Hatred to
all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine,
and not to give information.
(Juvenilia 178)

Austen thus knew and satirized histories of factional resentment similar to
those that the Scottish Enlighteners sought to overcome.

Austen would also likely have been familiar with a couple of dramas that
expressed the theme of an implacable resentment. In John Home’s
popular 1756 Scottish tragedy Douglas,
the character Lady Randolph early in Act One, Scene One exhorts her
husband:

Oh! rake not up the ashes of my fathers:

Implacable resentment was their crime,

And grievous has the expiation been. (8)

But the resentment long continues to work its ill effects as the tragedy
remained popular in both Scotland and England for several decades.
Austen herself knew the play well enough to quote a line from it in
Mansfield Park (149). In fact, she generally loved drama and the theater, as
Penny Gay has shown, and she would also certainly have known Nicholas
Rowe’s 1702 tragic play The Fair Penitent,
whose seductive character Lothario could readily have served as a
model for the various cads in Austen’s novels. Possibly,
he might have helped her shade Wickham’s character. Since
our more immediate focus, however, is Darcy, the following statement
by the character Horatio from Act Four, Scene One of Rowe’s
drama may prove of interest:

I am not apt to take a light offence.

But patient of the failings of my friends,

And willing to forgive; but when an injury

Stabs to the heart, and rouses my resentment,

(Perhaps it is the fault of my rude nature)

I own, I cannot easily forgive it. (335)

These words do not explicitly show Horatio openly describing his
temper as resentful, and he even claims to be one “not apt to take a
light offence.” Nevertheless, he confesses that due to
resentment grounded in the “fault” of his “rude
nature,” he cannot easily forgive an injury that stabs to his
heart. This acknowledgment may remind us of Darcy’s
admission that, based on the “fault” of his own resentful
temper, he “‘cannot forget . . . offences
against” himself (63) and Elizabeth’s recollection of
this admission as meaning that he “‘hardly ever forgave’”
(105). Although the terms differ—“rude nature”
versus “temper”—both Horatio and Darcy appeal to
their basic character as explanation for their stubborn resentment.

Darcy’s ardent love

Although Darcy initially has no interest in Elizabeth and even deplores her
inferior social status, he soon begins to notice her attractive
features, especially the way in which her face is “rendered
uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes,”
the “light and pleasing” aspect of her figure, and the
“easy playfulness” of her manner (26). From this
series of closely spaced moments of recognition, Darcy discovers to
his surprise that he is attracted. He begins “to wish to
know more of her” and therefore starts to attend “to her
conversation with others” (26). He certainly comes to
realize that she enjoys reading, for in his presence, she turns down
a card game in favor of a book (40), and in a conversation that soon
follows, Darcy maintains that for a woman to be truly accomplished,
she must demonstrate “‘improvement of her mind by
extensive reading’” (43). He also enjoys
conversation (27-28), attends to hers, as already noted (26), and
obviously takes delight in her conversational art, as evidenced by
his smiles at her verbal adroitness (49, 63, 102, 197,
et passim),
which he later characterizes as her “‘liveliness of . . .
mind’” (421). Elizabeth’s attractiveness for
him is thus both physical and intellectual. Already at an early
meeting, due to the “mixture of sweetness and archness in her
manner,” he finds himself never “so bewitched by any
woman as he was by her” and realizes that he could “be in
some danger,” yet he continues to admire the “‘colour
and shape [of her eyes], and the eye-lashes, so remarkably fine’”
(56-57). Because of his own “tolerably powerful feeling
towards her” (105), he also later pardons her friendship with
the despised Mr. Wickham.

Due to her social inferiority, however, he regularly attempts to maintain
emotional distance, “scarcely [speaking] ten words to her
through the whole of” a day (66) or adopting “a colder
voice” in her presence (201). Despite his best efforts to
resist her charms, he falls ever more deeply in love with her through
each subsequent meeting, as he confesses to her in his initial
proposal of marriage: “‘In vain have I struggled.
It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must
allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you’”
(211). His is a genuine struggle between an elevated pride and
an overwhelming love, for when he finally approaches her to propose,
“he came towards her in an agitated manner” (211)—though
he expresses himself eloquently in “representing to her the
strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he
had found impossible to conquer” (212).

Elizabeth engenders resentment

Although Elizabeth “could not be insensible to the compliment of such a
man’s affection,” she not only does not love Darcy, she
has a “deeply-rooted dislike” for him (211) based partly
upon what she considers his “‘malice’” (107,
cf. 90). She is “roused to resentment” by his
“pride,” by his “sense of her inferiority,”
and by the “real security” of “his countenance”
that revealed “no doubt of a favourable answer” to his
marriage proposal (211-212). To his astonishment, she turns him
down:

In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express
a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally
they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be
felt, and if I could feel
gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot—I have
never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it
most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any
one. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope
will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me,
have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have
little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.”
(212)

From such an adamantine rebuff, Darcy can hardly react with easy equanimity:

Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantle-piece with his eyes fixed
on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than
surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the
disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. (212)

Indeed, we see that he reacts with a resentment
expressed quite visibly in his countenance.

According to the eighteenth-century Scottish historian William Robertson, a
complacent response by an aggrieved individual would seem “hardly
to be compatible with the strong resentment which calumniated
innocence naturally feels” (489). In his pride and sense
of self-worth, Darcy feels himself wronged both by Elizabeth’s
rejection of his marriage proposal and by her manner of rejecting it,
so he must struggle powerfully for self-control: “He was
struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his
lips, till he believed himself to have attained it” (212).
He then asks “in a voice of forced calmness” why
Elizabeth has rejected him “‘with so little endeavour
at civility’” (212). Elizabeth offers three
reasons: his insufferably proud manner of proposing, his
highhanded interference in separating his friend Bingley from her
sister Jane, and his cruel refusal to support his longtime
acquaintance Mr. Wickham in the latter’s desire for a church
career (213-14).

At the first two charges, Darcy’s countenance undergoes a “changed
colour,” but he maintains an “assumed tranquillity”
(213). The third accusation, however, rankles him:

“You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,”
said Darcy in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?”

“His misfortunes!” repeated Darcy contemptuously; “yes, his
misfortunes have been great indeed.” (214)

Consistent with Robertson’s views on “the strong resentment which
calumniated innocence naturally feels” (489), Darcy’s
more strongly resentful reaction at this third, entirely
inappropriate
accusation is fully justified—and itself serves as evidence of
his innocence. Given Darcy’s resentful temper, we might
therefore expect that he would not forget
Elizabeth’s offense against him and that his formerly good
opinion of her would be lost forever,
for like Horatio in Rowe’s Fair Penitent,
he has received “an injury [that] / Stabs to the heart”
(Rowe 335).

Excursus: Jane Austen’s Christianity

Darcy is manifestly caught in a dilemma, and if love is to overcome
resentment, then the former will have to provide the epistemological
framework for judging the latter since such powerful feelings as love
and resentment cannot simply be repressed. We need, however, to
know a bit more about Austen’s views on love—and that
requires something of an excursus into her religious orientation.
Jane Austen was a Christian, a clergyman’s daughter, and a
church-going Anglican, but her Christianity is difficult to pin
down. According to Oliver MacDonagh, Austen’s
“Christianity was Christocentric in the orthodox
pious-protestant sense” (42), but even that definition is not
very specific.

Christopher Brooke states that she was influenced by Evangelicalism, but was no
Evangelical herself (126-27). Indeed, he notes her criticism of
the sermons preached by her Evangelical cousin Edward Cooper for
being too full of “Regeneration and Conversion” and “zeal
in the cause of the Bible Society” (127). Brooke suggests
that these words imply some disdain for the Calvinist piety
associated with British Evangelicals, especially their emphasis upon
predestination, for she took a broad view of God’s compassion,
writing in one of her composed prayers the petition that “thy
mercy be extended over all mankind” (128). He contends
that she “retained to the end of her days a preference for a
traditional Anglican theology” (129), but also softened in her
attitude toward Evangelicals as she grew older, for he notes some
positive remarks in a letter to her niece Fanny Knight discussing the
piety of Miss Knight’s suitor, James Plumptre:

And as to there being any objection from his Goodness,
from the danger of his becoming even Evangelical, I cannot admit
that.
I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals,
& am at least persuaded that they who are so from Reason &
Feeling, must be happiest & safest.—Do not be frightened
from the connection by your Brothers having most wit. Wisdom is
better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh
on her side; & don’t be frightened by the idea of his
acting more strictly up to the precepts of the New Testament than
others. (18-20 November 1814)

Clearly, Austen writes of Evangelicals from an external perspective, and
Brooke concludes that “her comments and her prayers suggest a
middle-of-the-road Anglicanism—rather high than low church”
(Brooke 136).

Consistent with this view of Austen’s Christianity, we learn from Michael
Wheeler that one of the few books personally “owned by Jane
Austen herself, and not simply borrowed from her father’s
library of 500 volumes . . . , was William
Vickers’s A Companion to the Altar,
later referred to by a great-niece, Miss Florence Austen, as a ‘book
of devotions always used by Jane Austen.’” Wheeler
further notes that this book was intended for preparing the Christian
for holy communion (410). Given her Anglican faith, Austen
would undoubtedly have been familiar with readings from the widely
used Anglican Book of Common Prayer,
such as this one from the 1778 edition to be recited on “the
next Sunday before Lent”:

O Lord, who hast taught us, that all our doings without charity are
nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that
most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace, and of all
virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee:
Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. (15)

This collective prayer is immediately followed by the Authorized Version
of St. Paul’s famous hymn to love in First Corinthians
Thirteen, which includes these lines (verses 4-5): “Charity
suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth
not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly,
seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil”
(15). The word “charity” sounds odd to our
contemporary ears, but Austen would have understood it to mean an
active, generous, giving, and forgiving love. Neither in these
two lines nor in the larger context of First Corinthians Thirteen are
either “pride” or “resentment” explicitly
mentioned, but a strong warning against pride can easily be read in
such expressions as “vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,”
and a warning against “resentment” can perhaps be found
in “thinketh no evil.” The more recent Revised
Standard Version, in fact, offers precisely this translation of verse
five: “[Love] is not arrogant or rude. Love does
not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.”

Let us further note that against pride and related vices, the Litany from
the same 1778 Book of Common Prayer
also warns: “From all blindness of heart; from pride,
vain glory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all
uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us”
(xxxvii). The regular Christian reader of such a prayer book
would readily connect this admonition with the Lent reading above,
and Austen’s own privately composed prayers seem to recall some
of the language in these passages:1

Incline us to ask our hearts these [morally self-critical] questions oh! God,
and save us from deceiving ourselves through pride and vanity.
(qtd. in Collins 197)

Pardon oh! God the offences of the past day. We are conscious of many
frailties; we remember with shame and contrition, many evil thoughts
and neglected duties. (198)

Incline us oh God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the
examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with
kindness, and to judge all they say and do with that charity which we
would desire from them ourselves. (199)

Austen’s prayers to God requesting insight into self-pride, pardon for evil
thoughts, and assistance in charity towards others clearly resonate
with the language of the Anglican and biblical passages looked at
above. To round out this excursus and prepare for our return to
Mr. Darcy, we should perhaps also note that in one of her prayers,
Austen asks God to “bring to our knowledge every fault of
temper” (197).

“Feelings . . . not puffed about”

Let us now return to Darcy. Recall that he has been roused to what
he would surely consider justified
resentment, and we know from his own words that his “‘feelings
are not puffed about with every attempt to move them’”
(63). But this strength of feeling surely works both ways, for
in his inner struggle between a long-held pride and a growing love,
the latter had conquered, animating his marriage proposal, for his
“‘feelings [would] not be repressed’” (211).
“Amor vincit omnia,”
Chaucer’s prioress might well observe. “Love
conquers all,” and Darcy’s strong feelings of love will
not be easily puffed away. But can his love overcome his
admittedly implacable
resentment? For that, he would need a love that is active,
generous, giving, and forgiving.

Although nothing is said of his particular doctrinal beliefs, he is an
Anglican with “considerable patronage in the church”
(203), and he expects the clergy to adhere to respectable moral
standards, e.g.,
he maintains that the dissipated “‘Mr. Wickham ought not
to be a clergyman’” (223). Moreover, in a telling
moment, he reveals something of his fervor—both religious and
romantic—in concluding his letter explaining his actions toward
Jane Bennet and Mr. Wickham the day after Elizabeth has so harshly
rejected his proposal, for he adds “‘God bless you’”
(225), an adieu that Elizabeth comes to consider “‘charity
itself’” (409). In the religious language of
Austen’s time, as we have seen, the term “charity”
meant a love that “vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up”
and that “thinketh no evil.” Darcy’s romantic
love for Elizabeth is thus imbued with the Christian concept of a
love that is not proud and that seeks to perceive what is good in the
loved one. More than an emotion, it is a means of
knowing the world—and of knowing how to act in it.
It is a love that knows how to overcome even implacable
resentment. His love for Elizabeth thus continues to grow even
after her uncivil rejection, so much so that it enables him to pass
the most severe of tests, that of willingly forging an unbreakable
bond of kinship to Mr. Wickham. When Elizabeth’s foolish
and headstrong young sister Lydia elopes with Mr. Wickham, apparently
without any utterly certain intention of marrying, Elizabeth
confesses the fact to Darcy, to whom she bitterly observes that her
sister “‘is lost for ever’” (305). Her
words literally repeat Darcy’s earlier words in speaking of his
resentful nature, for he had said that once his good opinion is lost,
it “‘is lost for ever’” (63), a specific turn
of a phrase that occurs only
these two times in the entire novel. Perhaps recalling his own
words, Darcy is described as “fixed in astonishment”
(305), and if ever there were a moment in which a family should lose
forever his good opinion, this is the moment.

Elizabeth certainly interprets Darcy’s subsequent, gloomy silence as he
paces about the room to be confirmation to this loss of opinion:

Elizabeth soon observed, and instantly understood it. Her power was
sinking; every thing must sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of the
deepest disgrace. (306)

She, however, is mistaken, for Darcy is already deep in thought over how
to locate Wickham and Lydia and arrange for the least dire outcome,
and he succeeds in doing so—all without Elizabeth knowing.
When she finally does come to know what Darcy has done for her
family, and attempts to thank him, he replies:

If you will thank me, . . . let it be for yourself alone. That
the wish of giving happiness to you, might add force to the other
inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But
your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe, I thought
only of you.” (406)

Darcy’s love for Elizabeth enables him to accomplish something entirely
opposed to his previously resentful temper. Rather than a loss
of good opinion, there is respect for her family. He himself
confesses that her rejection of his overbearing marriage proposal had
“‘properly humbled’” him (410) and that his
subsequent amiability (cf. 293) toward her upon their accidental
meeting at his Pemberley estate “‘was to shew you, by
every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the
past’” (410). Through his love for Elizabeth,
therefore, Darcy not only judges his own resentful temper and finds
it wanting, he also finds himself inwardly empowered to overcome it.

Adam Smith may have thought that the opposed feelings of love and
resentment did not judge one another, but Jane Austen—whether
or not she knew specifically of Smith’s view—appears to
have held a radically different opinion. Ever since Juliet McMaster’s 1978 book
Jane Austen on Love,
we have known that Austen conceives of proper lovers as each taking
on roles as the teacher and the taught in a pedagogical economy
concerning love, and of proper love as achieving the “integration
of head and heart” (45) in a manner that does not lose passion
because “the full and mutual engagement of head and heart is
what is
passionate” (46). But if love involves the heart as well
as the head, then love plays a unique
pedagogical role, for it also provides an impassioned epistemological
framework for understanding the world and acting within it. In
Austen’s understanding, the heart’s romantic love must be
imbued with the head’s charitable Christian love, which can
judge pride and resentment as improper to love and thereby seek a
better way. Douglas Bush, writing in 1975, spoke of Austen’s
“fusion of Christian virtues and principles and
eighteenth-century reason, . . . sensitized and fired by
controlled feeling” (196). Perhaps this remark gets at
what Austen was up to, namely, responding to the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment with a renewed Christian view of the human being.
The best education by itself would not overcome one’s natural
evil, as Darcy himself remarks of his own “implacably”
resentful temper, but a genuine love—neither proud nor
resentful, but charitable—could empower one to do so, and in
Darcy’s case actually does so.

Note

1.
Janet Todd and Linda Bree have recently summarized evidence for and
against the attribution of these prayers to Jane Austen (LM
cxviii-cxxvi). Because of their view that attribution
is suspect, they place the prayers in an Appendix to the Later
Manuscripts.
Their view awaits scholarly consensus, but even if authorship is
uncertain, my larger argument remains intact.